*****
My friend who assisted (volunteered) me during the recent shoot at the Neralu tree festival, came back to me with a mail writing about her experience of what she felt being a part of the Neralu tree festival. I wanted to put her words out to the world and what a person who is not into nature related activities or part of such awareness program felt about the whole event. So over to Nidhi who wrote this beautiful little blog and also clicked the below set of pictures during the festival.
-Shiv
*****
Neralu was a festival to celebrate trees and their importance in our lives. A small group of people came up with this concept of Neralu and lot more people volunteered to join and bring it to life. Everyone was putting in effort in their own small way to educate the so called educated society and make them aware of how we are destroying nature and in turn our own selves. I call it the so called educated society because this is not something they don’t know about but they need to be reminded to work for it. It high time we all realize that all of us have to make an effort to save the trees and environment.The thing I liked most abut Neralu was that it did not target any particular age group. It was for kids and elders alike. Events during the festival were such that everyone could participate. Story telling for kids, street plays, talks, documentary screening, tree walks, Interactive activities are just to name a few.
I have attended such events in past but for the first time was a part of it. This gave me an opportunity to closely talk to the people behind the event, the organisers and the volunteers. Though a minor part of this big event I got to learn a lot more than just about trees there.It gave me the feel of what it actually means to work for a cause. being a software engineer I spend most of my time in front of a computer. Whatever was being told about the trees in this event was not completely new to me. I have forwarded loads of mails, shared posts on facebook, seen tweets and read articles with similar contents. But this event taught me the difference between sitting in your comfortable zone reading articles and going out and working for that cause. How many of us sitting in these tall AC buildings actually make an effort to do so. I even know people who feel going to events like Neralu is a waste of time and prefer going to a mall shopping and watching movie. Then they sit in their home and crib about global warming, trees being cut and government not taking any action.
But the question here should be ‘ARE WE TAKING ANY ACTION?’
Neralu, no doubt, was a great festival but we all need to join together to make it an even bigger success by achieving what it is meant to achieve and that is not just spreading awareness but putting that awareness to action to bring that change.
-Nidhi Pawar
Below is a short video that we did as a part of the 2 day activity. A big thanks to Adarsh, Nidhi, Vinayak, Radha, Niranj, Priya, Amit for the support during the shoot and most importantly all the organisers of Neralu Tree Festival especially Anush and Sangeeta for giving us an opportunity to be a part of this lovely festival.
Some photos from the event.
